Best Portfolio Analysis Tools – Tune up Your Portfolio
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I used to hate taking my car in for a tuneup. It was expensive and sometimes led to costly repairs I didn’t know I needed. Finding problems and fixing them before they get too big is part of the reasoning behind tuneups, so I followed the car manufacturer’s recommended servicing schedule.
Then I bought an electric car, and later a hydrogen car, and because they have so many fewer moving parts than a gas-powered car, the mechanics found fewer problems, and my tuneup costs dropped considerably.
My investment portfolios aren’t as easy to run, but I’ve found many portfolio analysis tools to make my financial tune-ups much easier. Most tools on the apps I can use myself, though from time to time, I need a financial advisor to help.
The best portfolio analysis tools can help you with everything from daily budgeting to ensuring your retirement accounts are on track. They can also do heavier work, such as analyzing investment portfolios at multiple brokerages to see if your asset allocation is what you want.
Beginners and long-time investors can find them helpful in analyzing and tuning their portfolios.
In this article
Overview of the best portfolio analysis tools
Company | Best For |
Morningstar Premium | Finding undervalued stocks |
Empower | Range of planning tools |
Portfolio Visualizer | Experienced investors |
Quicken Premier | Tax reports |
SigFig | Low investment fees |
- See all of your accounts in one secure place.
- Monitor all of your investments in real time.
- Track your complete, true net worth.
Best portfolio analysis tools
Morningstar Premium
Morningstar Premium is the only paid version of Morningstar, best known for its Morningstar Rating. These are mathematical measures of a fund’s risk-adjusted return about similar funds, rating funds from one to a high of five stars. Subscribers can quickly see how a fund is rated by its star rating, which doesn't include any subjective input.
Morningstar’s free version is called Morningstar Portfolio Manager and provides only basic services such as tracking an investment portfolio, evaluating strategy, and creating watchlists. Star ratings can’t be viewed in the basic version.
But Morningstar Ratings can be seen in Morningstar Premium and are a good way to find undervalued stocks since a five-star rating means the stock is significantly undervalued and is considered a good deal for the share price. The paid service also offers analyst reports and ratings from more than 150 independent analysts on mutual funds, stocks, and ETFs.
A free version of Morningstar’s Portfolio X-ray tool helps analyze a group of holdings, but it’s a very basic tool. A better version of its X-ray tool in the paid version lets subscribers get a better picture of their portfolio’s overall characteristics. Other services use it to do their analysis and reporting.
Morningstar also offers research on Environmental, Social, and Governance, or ESG investing. These are non-financial factors analysts use to identify risk and growth opportunities. For example, socially conscious investors may want to use ESG criteria in determining how a company is a steward of nature.
- Costs: $249 for one year.
- Where to find: Morningstar Premium
Empower
The free version of Empower (formerly Personal Capital) offers basic investment help, mainly as a financial aggregator, to give you an overall look at your net worth and current portfolio in real-time. No software is required to download, and you can use Personal Capital’s features through a browser or mobile app on both Apple and Android devices.
It also has free budgeting tools and savings and retirement planners. Just connect your financial institutions where you hold assets to Personal Capital, and it imports your financial data. Finance accounts you may want to import from include a mortgage, IRA, 401(k), credit cards, bank accounts, brokerages, and loans.
Its Investment Checkup tool is also free. It compares your portfolio and target allocation to reach your financial goals. Risk levels aren’t reviewed, but this robo-advisor suggests achieving comparable performance while reducing risk.
Don’t let the term robo-advisor dissuade you. It’s a way to provide financial advice with little human interaction, based in part on the filters you provide.
For a management fee, you can get assistance from financial advisors at Personal Finance if you use it as an investment manager with at least $100,000 in an investment account. Management fees start at 0.89% of assets under management of up to $1 million. It falls to as low as 0.49% with more than $10 million in investments.
Paying clients get extra tools, such as a personalized financial roadmap that recommends actions for retirement and emergency savings. A smart withdrawal tool gives customized advice for withdrawing from investment accounts.
- Costs: Free version, or 0.49% to 0.89% of assets under management in an investment account at Personal Capital.
Portfolio Visualizer
Portfolio Visualizer can be a little intimidating as a portfolio analysis tool that will aggregate your portfolio. It can do a lot of analysis, which is a great thing, but the complex financial terms, quantitative analysis, and all of the tools it provides can be overwhelming for beginners and may appeal more to experienced investors.
To compare benchmarks, it can run a backtest portfolio, factor analysis, asset analytics, Monte Carlo simulation, portfolio optimization, and timing models. Those services are free. Anything like importing portfolios and factoring in management fees costs $30 or $55 monthly.
Suppose there are terms on Portfolio Visualizer that you haven’t heard of. In that case, the site has some information to explain to new investors how to use its services as an investment analysis tool, though not everyone may be comfortable using them all.
Its backtest portfolios allow up to three separate asset allocations to be run at a time to find one that works best for you. Portfolio Visualizer provides portfolio analytics of many asset classes, including stock classes, foreign stock classes, and fixed-income classes. It also analyzes real estate investment trusts, gold and other precious metals, and commodities.
- Costs: Free version, or $30 or $55 per month.
- Where to find: Portfolio Visualizer
- See all of your accounts in one secure place.
- Monitor all of your investments in real time.
- Track your complete, true net worth.
Quicken Premier
Quicken Premier is an app that is one of five money management tools available from Quicken. The premier edition helps maximize your finances and investments and is the second-highest platform in costs and services after Quicken Home & Business.
It can provide investment tracking, advice on when to buy and sell investments, and track realized and unrealized gains. It provides budgeting and other wealth management services such as bill pay and reminders for upcoming due dates for bills, all while aggregating your financial accounts. All of its services are available on the web and mobile devices.
Quicken is known for its accounting software, QuickBooks, which helps with tax filing. Quicken Premier helps minimize taxes by analyzing your investing activities, such as providing reports on capital gains, cost basis, rates of return, and performance versus the market.
It provides many types of investment management reports that can be customized. It also provides access to the Morningstar Portfolio X-ray tool. A retirement planner tool is also offered.
Quicken must be downloaded to a desktop or laptop computer. The full version can’t be installed on mobile devices. However, the free Quicken companion mobile app is available for iOS and Android devices, so you can view your account on a phone or tablet. Your financial accounts will sync along with all devices.
Quicken Premier normally sells for $6.99 for a one-month subscription, but a 40% discount to around $4.19 per month is often available. Quicken doesn’t offer a free version of its software, so you can try out a lesser version of the premier service, but it does have a 30-day money-back guarantee.
- Costs: $4.19 per month.
- Where to find: Quicken
SigFig
SigFig is a robo-advisor like Personal Capital that helps you pick investments based on your investment timeline, goals, risk tolerance, and other factors. It isn’t a portfolio analyzer and doesn’t offer other money management tools, though it does a solid job of tracking and analyzing portfolios managed through SigFig.
Its investment management services include dividend reinvestment, periodic rebalancing, and how to reduce taxes from your investment activities.
SigFig helps you work toward your financial goals by helping you create a custom portfolio. It gives the example of saving to buy a house with an initial investment of $20,000. With a monthly contribution of $600, SigFig projects it will take eight years to save $80,000 to $110,000. That’s simple math, and the low balance is just from your contributions. But its investment choices may get it to $110,000.
One of the best things about SigFig is its low fees. It charges an annual fee of 0.25% of your assets in its portfolios, half of what Personal Capital charges on the low end of its fees. SigFig says the industry average is 1.3% annually.
The first $10,000 in an account is managed for free, and an account can be opened with $2,000.
Another benefit is that SigFig offers unlimited access to expert investment advisors no matter how low your investment level is. Personal Capital provides access to its advisors when you have at least $100,000 in an account.
They can help with personalized investment advice to reach your financial goals, help you understand your whole financial picture, help uncover hidden fees, and are obligated by the SEC to act in your best financial interests.
Connecting with a SigFig advisor seems easy on its website or by calling you to pick a date and time for a 30-minute phone call. Or you can ask questions via email.
SigFig can manage your account, or you can use its free portfolio tracker to analyze and monitor all of your investment accounts. You don’t have to move your investment account to SigFig. It can manage accounts at Charles Schwab or Fidelity for you.
- Costs: Free or 0.25% of assets.
- Where to find: SigFig
Best portfolio analysis tools summary
Company | Cost | Free version | Investment minimum for access to advisors |
Morningstar Premium | $249/year | Yes | N/A |
Empower | 0.49%-0.89% | Yes | $100,000 |
Portfolio Visualizer | Free, or $30, $55/mo. | Yes | N/A |
Quicken Premier | $4.19/month | No | N/A |
SigFig | Free, 0.25% | Yes | $2,000 |
FAQs
Should I buy a portfolio analysis tool that does everything?
It depends on what you want, but you can start with a general service that provides a look at all of your finances and helps with budgeting and other personal finance tasks. Many of the portfolio analysis tools we reviewed provide both budgeting and investment checkup services to give you an overall picture of your finances. Others, such as SigFig, focus only on investment management. Most services let you cancel or get a refund after one month, so it may be worth trying one or more services before deciding which one you want to keep.
What portfolio management tools are most important?
Your investments should be an important part of your financial life, so either managing them yourself or letting experts do the work requires the best tools. It also depends on what you’re most comfortable using. Stock screeners and x-ray tools can help analyze ETFs and the full holdings of each fund in a portfolio can be worthwhile, but they may be a little too much information for you to be comfortable managing. To start, look for tools that are easy to use and help you review the success of your investments, and can lead you in retirement planning and other goals.
Do I have to sync my accounts with the app?
Generally, yes. The point of these apps is to help you manage your finances, whether it’s everything or just your investments. They do that by having access to all of your financial accounts, including brokerages, credit cards, banks, and lenders. Without it, you’ll have to manually enter the information, which many don’t allow.
- See all of your accounts in one secure place.
- Monitor all of your investments in real time.
- Track your complete, true net worth.
Why should you use portfolio analysis tools?
These tools can make it fast, easy, and inexpensive to manage your finances, from your daily expenses and budget to investment and retirement accounts. The expense can be worth it if you earn more money through suggested investments, but it can also be worthwhile just for simplifying your life.
With very little work, you can get a bird’s-eye view of your cash flow and an investment checkup as often as you want. Some platforms can schedule paying bills for you. Life doesn’t get much easier than that.
The bottom line
If nothing else, it’s worth trying a free version of a portfolio analysis tool to get some budgeting help. Once you have that under control, it can be worth checking a service’s portfolio performance and management tools to see if they’re easy to use and fit your needs.
If you find one that does budgeting and investing for you in a way that’s easy and inexpensive, you may be on a better road to having a better handle on your finances.
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Writer
Aaron Crowe is a freelance journalist who specializes in personal finance writing and editing. He has worked at newspapers, where he won a Pulitzer Prize, and has written for numerous online publications. These include AOL, US News & World Report, WiseBread, Bankrate, AARP, and many websites focusing on housing, credit and insurance. He lives in California with his wife and daughter.
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